The present invention relates to gas struts or gas props such as those used to support a vehicle access door in an open position, and particularly, to a support for securing a weak gas prop in its position in which the vehicle access door is held open.
Many vehicles are provided with access doors such as a hood, passenger door, hatchback, or truck bed topper door which is raised or otherwise opened to provide access to the engine compartment, truck bed, or interior of the vehicle. Some of these vehicles access doors are also equipped with a hydraulic cylinder and rod combination, known as a gas prop or strut, that is designed to hold the access door in its fully open position. Specifically, these gas props are intended to provide sufficient resistance to the weight of the access door to prevent gravity from allowing the access door to drop or otherwise close; however, this resistance can be overcome by manually applying additional force to the access door to thereby close it.
The hydraulic cylinders in such gas props tend to become defective over time, which causes them to fail to support the access door in an open position for a prolonged or for any period of time. In the most severe instances of such failures, the gas prop may hold the access door open at first, but then when a person is positioned underneath the access door, the cylinder may fail thus causing the access door to strike the person, causing pain and/or injury. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a system that mitigates the failure of the gas props used to support access doors.